Algae Id: Hair..beard..thread?

Lifetime Member

I have an outbreak of algae. It started as a few curley threads...pulled off easily. They became more numerous..and spread. I cut off ends of val...and it's exploded..sort of. A lot of my val and corkscrew val have it on th upper few inches. I'd read to twirl it off with a toothbrush..no can do. Tried scraping off with fingernails...if I can without breaking leaves...seems to leave a residue. I don't have any on gravel, sides of tank...anything else. It seems to be kind of a blue green tinged.
I have a 55 gal tank which I'm dosing as follows:
15 ml Excel every other day
5 ml of Flourish 2 x per wk
5 ml Flourish Iron 2 x per week
4-5 drops Fleet enema 2 x per week
15 ml of potassium made from solution of 1 TBSP/300 ml water solution
3/4 tsp Green lite stump dissolver...dissolved in water.

I have a 2 bulb regular output fluorecent bulb light strip: I estimate 1.5 wpg.
I do not use Co2.

as a note..I did have hornwort...and decided to get rid if it because it kept growing so fast and obstructed light to the lower levels of the tank. Soon after I got rid of it, is when I noticed the first of this algae, and also some green spot algae. I scraped the green spot off, but missed a couple of spots on the front glass of the tank...it's stayed the same, not grown. Also around this time I had been dosing the Excel 7.5 ml daily, and made the hcange to 15 ml every other day.

Sounds to me like the hornwort was a big part of the equation that allowed your plants to out compete the algae. Most of the plants you named, I think are slow growers. I'd guess you would need to cut down your dosing since you removed a serious weed.

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